Walt Disney

by Bob Thomas

  Walt’s opposition to a second Disneyland weakened as his organization at WED matured in its skills. Walt saw the chance of doing something beyond duplication of a theme park. He concluded that another Disneyland could be used as the “wienie” to accomplish his greater goal: planning and building a new kind of city that would show how people could live in a clean, handsome and stimulating community.

  The beginnings of his thinking might be traced to the building of the Burbank studio in the late 1930s. Walt was able to plan the Burbank plant in every detail, down to the contour of the animator’s chair. Disneyland was again the product of meticulous planning, and, within the confines of the park, it worked. But Walt was appalled by how the promoters made a “second-rate Las Vegas” out of the periphera.

  After spending his adult life in Los Angeles, he had witnessed how the automobile had changed a sunny, attractive town into a concrete-paved, smog-choked metropolis. He wanted to combat the tyranny of the car and restore a degree of the comfortable life that his generation had known earlier in the century.

  Research began in 1958, when Walt commissioned Economics Research Associates to determine the most favorable location in the East for another Disneyland. The answer confirmed Walt’s thinking: Florida. The weather allowed a year-round operation, which was necessary for such a large investment. The single drawback was Florida’s population. Disneyland had been attracting between 60 to 65 percent of its 5,000,000 annual visitors from within the state; whereas Florida’s entire population was 6,500,000. Walt wasn’t concerned. “We just gotta get the folks up north to want to come down,” he reasoned.

  Two more surveys were made in 1959: one to determine the best place within Florida, the other to evaluate the possibility of a City of Tomorrow to surround the theme park. The research suggested Palm Beach as the most favorable location. RCA, which wanted to join with Disney in a theme park, began negotiations for twelve thousand acres in North Palm Beach. But the two parties couldn’t reach an agreement, and Palm Beach was dropped as a potential site. That suited Walt, who retained his prejudice against placing his park near the ocean. He didn’t want to compete with the beach atmosphere; furthermore, the Florida coast was subject to humidity and hurricanes. “I want to be inland,” he declared. “We’ll create our own water.”

  In 1961, Walt ordered another survey to determine the ideal location. Ocala was the number-one choice; second, Orlando. Again the Florida Project was put aside as Walt embarked on the planning for the New York World’s Fair. In 1963, when design of the four exhibits neared completion, Walt decided to begin preparing another challenge for WED. He ordered a third evaluation of the Florida site. Previous findings had overlooked an important future route of the Florida freeway system. The new data pointed to Orlando as the ideal location.

  In November 1963, Walt made a fateful flight to the East. Along with Donn Tatum, Card Walker, Joe Potter, Buzz Price and Jack Sayers, a Disneyland executive, Walt sought a final location of the company’s next theme park. The party stopped at St. Louis, where civic leaders had been seeking Disney’s participation for a riverfront park as part of the rejuvenation of the downtown city. But there was too little land, and the financial risk seemed too great. Next came Niagara Falls, where Disney had been asked to join a development on the Canadian side. The long, cold winter precluded a profitable operation there. A site between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore was also rejected because weather would not permit year-round operation.

  The plane headed south. Walt directed the pilot to fly along the coast of Florida so he could satisfy himself that he did not want to build a park on the ocean. The travelers headed inland, flying at a low altitude—Walt always liked to fly as low as possible to study the landscape. The plane circled over the limitless swamps and forests near Orlando, and Walt peered down with calculating eyes. Then he ordered the pilot to New Orleans. As the Disney executives drove from the airport to their hotel, they noticed crowds of people huddled around radios and watching television sets in store windows. When Walt arrived at the hotel he learned what had happened: President Kennedy had been shot.

  Walt was shocked and saddened, and he said little on the gloomy return flight to California. Before the plane arrived in Burbank, he remarked, “Well, that’s the place—central Florida.”

  Walt and Roy agreed to seek enough property in central Florida so the new project could be developed as a totality, avoiding the visual ruin of Anaheim. Robert Foster, secretary and general counsel of Disneyland, was assigned to the delicate operation of acquiring the land in a quiet manner that would prevent prices from soaring. He studied geodetic survey maps, searched Orlando, Ocala and Lakeland newspapers for land offerings, read circulars from real-estate dealers. In February 1964, Roy Disney and several executives flew to Florida; Walt was left behind for fear that he would be recognized. The travelers registered at hotels under assumed names and made unobtrusive surveys of the areas. They reported to Walt that several large parcels of land were available. “Okay, let’s go after some land,” he said.

  Robert Foster began operations in Florida, functioning with the secrecy of a James Bond. Through the New York law firm that represented Disney—Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Irvine—he located a Miami lawyer, Paul Helliwell, who had important connections in the state. Without identifying his company, Foster told his purpose: “To acquire a large parcel of land for recreational purposes, large enough for land use as well.” Helliwell referred Foster to Roy Hawkins, a real estate dealer with statewide experience. Foster identified himself to Hawkins as Robert Price, his first two names. Although he later disclosed his real identity and that of his employer to Hawkins, Foster remained “Bob Price” in negotiations with landowners.

  In May 1964, Foster and Hawkins had narrowed their choices to three areas—one between De Land and Daytona Beach, another near Osceola City, a third in Orange County near Orlando. Foster made a presentation to Disney executives in Burbank, arguing for the De Land-Daytona Beach property. Walt ended the proposal by interrupting, “Bob, what in the hell are you doing way up there?” He reminded Foster of surveys that showed the northern location would be too cold for a year-round operation and for the park’s vegetation.

  The Osceola City property was owned by a state senator, Irlo Bronson, who had a commitment to sell 2,500 of his 10,000 acres. The Disney efforts were centered on Orange County. There were three major areas: 12,000 acres owned by two cousins; Bay Lake property owned by twelve Orlando couples; another lake area of 1,200 acres belonging to a pair of brothers. Forty-eight small parcels, called outages, had separate owners. By August, the three major holdings were tied down with options. Senator Bronson decided to sell his entire 10,000 acres at Osceola City, and the property was acquired by Disney as an alternative if the Orange County operation foundered.

  A crisis developed with the discovery that the owners did not control mineral rights; they belonged to a mineral company and Tufts College. After lengthy negotiations, both agreed to a settlement and relinquished their rights.

  The major problem was the outages. The lake property had been subdivided in 1913 and plots had been sold through mail-order catalogues. A fifty-person task force traced descendants of the original buyers and offered to purchase the property. A conference room in Burbank contained a huge map of Orange County, and each day the state of acquisitions was plotted, like territory won by troops in a war. Walt visited the room daily.

  Placing his palm over the intersection of two highways, he said, “Now this is very important to our future development. If we can get all the property here, we can do something imaginative with it. If we can’t get it all, then we’ll be stuck with something conventional.”

  During one of the meetings, Bob Foster mentioned a large parcel that was available. “Buy it,” Walt said. Roy protested that they had already committed themselves to a huge amount of acreage. “Yes, Roy,” Walt replied, “but wouldn’t you love to own seven thousand acres around Disneyland now? And anyway, we can alw
ays sell this parcel later if we have to.”

  Walt couldn’t resist seeing the property himself, even though he realized the danger if he were recognized. He flew off to Florida in the company plane with a few of his executives. When the plane stopped to refuel at a Florida airport, all of the travelers started heading for the terminal. One of them said to Walt, “You can’t go; you’ll be spotted.” Walt grudgingly agreed to remain on the field. A young mechanic stared at him and remarked, “Are you Walt Disney?” “Hell, no,” Walt replied. “I get mistaken for him all the time, and if I ever run into that s.o.b., I’m going to tell him what I think of him.”

  Walt viewed the proposed site from the air. The land was a broad vista of cypress groves and black-watered swamps, and it seemed a forbidding task to raise a theme park and a city of the future from the wilderness. But Walt was immensely pleased. “Yeah, it’s going to be fine,” he said.

  Rumors continued to circulate in Orlando about who was buying options on the vast property. Some said it was Ford Motor Company, others suspected McDonnell-Douglas or Disney. When Roy Hawkins sent postcards from Seattle to friends in Orlando, many citizens were convinced that Boeing was the mysterious purchaser.

  By October of 1965, less than three hundred acres remained to be acquired. News reporters from the East were visiting the studio, and in a press conference a representative of the Orlando Sentinel asked Walt if his company was buying land in Florida. He could have dodged the question with a half-truth; instead, he replied, “I’d rather not say.”

  That weekend Bob Foster made a trip to Orlando with Joe Potter, the Army general who had been Robert Moses’s chief aide at the New York World’s Fair and had recently joined the Disney organization. Using assumed names, they registered at a hotel, viewed the site from a helicopter and tramped over the ground. When they returned to the hotel on Sunday, they saw a headline on the Orlando Sentinel: “WE SAY IT’S DISNEY.” Still hoping for secrecy, Potter used a pay telephone to call Card Walker and report that the news was leaking. Walt made the decision to announce the Florida Project. Potter and Foster flew to Miami to meet with the Governor of Florida, Haydon Burns, who wanted to make the announcement himself the following day at a convention luncheon.

  And so the news was out, with land acquisitions unfinished. The price on the remaining parcels of land quickly rose from $183 per acre to $1,000. But Disney had been able to acquire options on 27,000 acres of Florida at a price of $5,000,000.

  On November 15, a press conference was held at the Cherry Plaza Hotel in Orlando. With a politician’s flourish, Governor Burns introduced Walt Disney as “the man of the decade, who will bring a new world of entertainment, pleasure and economic development to the State of Florida.” The Governor termed Roy Disney “the financial wizard of Walt Disney Productions.”

  “This is the biggest thing we’ve ever tackled,” Walt began. “I might, for the benefit of the press, explain that my brother and I have been together in our business for forty-two years now. He’s my big brother, and he’s the one that when I was a little fellow I used to go to with some of my wild ideas, and he’d either straighten me out and put me on the right path—or if he didn’t agree with me, I’d work on it for years until I got him to agree with me. But I must say that we’ve had our problems that way, and that’s been the proper balance that we’ve been needing in our organization….In this project, though, I’d just like to say that I didn’t have to work very hard on him. He was with me from the start. Now whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know.”

  Members of the press asked about a model community for the employees of the Florida Project, and Walt disclosed publicly for the first time his thinking about a city of the future: “I would like to be part of building a model community, a City of Tomorrow, you might say, because I don’t believe in going out to this extreme blue-sky stuff that some architects do. I believe that people still want to live like human beings. There’s a lot of things that could be done. I’m not against the automobile, but I just feel that the automobile has moved into communities too much. I feel that you can design so that the automobile is there, but still put people back as pedestrians again, you see. I’d love to work on a project like that. Also, I mean, in the way of schools, facilities for the community, community entertainments and life. I’d love to be part of building up a school of tomorrow….This might become a pilot operation for the teaching age—to go out across the country and across the world. The great problem today is the one of teaching.”

  Walt set up a Florida Project planning committee at WED consisting of himself, Joe Potter and Marv Davis, who had a rare knack of putting Walt’s ideas into form. Only the three men had keys to the room where the Florida plans were kept. Throughout the planning, Walt concerned himself with the overall concept of the Florida Project and the design of the City of Tomorrow, paying scant attention to the theme park. He asked his planners: “If you were going to build another Disneyland, how would you do it?” They decided they would build it exactly as before. The design for Disneyland was perfect; the only alteration would be better access between Fantasyland and Frontierland. The finding confirmed Walt’s belief that he should concentrate his thinking on the City of Tomorrow. “We know how to build a theme park,” he said. “The new one will be no different from Disneyland—except we’ll have more water.”

  The City of Tomorrow became an obsession. He wanted it to include every possible scientific advance, and he commissioned Joe Potter, “Find out what industry is thinking about the future. What’s going on in the research laboratories, in the think tanks? Let’s take advantage of their know-how in our own planning.” Letters of inquiry were sent to five hundred corporations, and over the months Potter and others visited a hundred factories, research centers and foundations.

  Walt read omnivorously on city planning. Among the fourteen surveys he ordered from Economics Research Associates was one on model cities. It revealed that planned communities had existed since 1900 B.C., when one was established in Egypt for builders of a pyramid. Of the 125 new cities that had been built in the United States by the mid-1960s, few could be considered successful; most had repeated or compounded the errors of old cities. Walt was impressed by the New Towns program of postwar England, yet it seemed to have produced communities that were dull and drab. Walt was not discouraged. His natural optimism convinced him that environments of high quality could be planned so that people could “live like human beings” in the modern world.

  Nor was he discouraged by the failure of big corporations in efforts to create model cities. One major company had spent $100,000,000 in research for a plan to establish ten such cities, but the project came to nothing. Archaic building codes, protective labor unions, building material contractors, and shortsighted politicians inevitably made progressive change impossible. With his customary distrust of politicians, Walt Disney sought unprecedented freedom to develop a model city without interference. Donn Tatum pointed out that what he really wanted was “an experimental, absolute monarchy.” Walt raised an eyebrow and asked puckishly, “Can I have one?” “No,” Tatum replied.

  Walt needed a name for his future city. One day at lunch with his WED staff he mused, “What we’re talking about is an experimental prototype community of tomorrow. What does that spell? E-p-c-o-t. EPCOT. That’s what we’ll call it: EPCOT.”

  ON New Year’s Day, 1966, Walt Disney was seen by millions on television as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. To the generation who had seen him weekly on his television series, he seemed little different. The same straight hair and trimmed mustache—perhaps a little grayer—and the same wide grin and upraised eyebrow. But those who worked closely with Walt could see changes. He had passed his sixty-fourth year in December, and his once-limitless energies were beginning to flag. More and more he complained that he was feeling “gimpy” and that the day’s activities left him “pooped.”

  The old polo injury had grown worse. Pain shot down his back and in
to his left leg, and the nightly treatments by Hazel George brought little relief. Facial pain continued to afflict him; the attacks came at bedtime, and he spent hours in the night applying hot compresses to his face. A chronic sinus problem required weekly treatments. He was subject to colds and on at least two occasions probably had walking pneumonia. He developed a kidney ailment and entered St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica for examinations. His desk calendar for 1966 shows a series of doctor’s appointments and hospital visits. He spent more long weekends at Smoke Tree Ranch, where the Disneys had bought another house, and sometimes he remained a week.